• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Books are my comfort food!

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Mobile Menu

  • 4 Directions VA 2025 Raffle
  • 2025 Activism
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Idaho’s gaping loophole

Idaho’s gaping loophole

by David Anderson|  March 5, 201812:13 pm| 6 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance

FacebookTweetEmail

The counsel for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Idaho released a twelve page letter defending the state plan to effectively ignore the ACA’s requirements for the individual market. There is a massive loophole that he just leaps over as he argues that the plan provides adequate consumer protection.

Insurers may be required to offer a single on-Exchange Silver and a single on-Exchange Gold plan but there is no requirement that they actually need to sell a policy. The rest of this post is a riff on Freedom Life’s system.

Freedom Life is an insurance carrier that offered plans in many states over the past couple of years. They offer a single off-Exchange Bronze plan in each state that they are in. Most of their states, they sell absolutely no policies. Their ACA compliant plan is, in my opinion, the result of a very cautious legal department. They instead make their money selling limited benefit plans.

If I was in charge of a company that wants to make money in the Idaho state plan market, I would design my on-Exchange offerings so that they would not sell. I would rent the narrowest legal network from a national rental network provider and offer to pay 500% of Medicare for my on-Exchange products. If the rental network asks for 700%, I’ll agree. We’ll fight over the pricing and network for the state underwritten products. I would then make the benefit structure as confusing as possible with $200 co-pays for PCP services and no cost sharing for ER visits. My goal would be to develop a Silver and Gold plan that no one intentionally buys.

That is the easiest loophole to exploit in Idaho.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « A few things on the West Virginia strike
Next Post: PA-18 »

Reader Interactions

6Comments

  1. 1.

    Jay S

    March 5, 2018 at 12:28 pm

    Your plan would have to account for the 27% crazyfication factor though. How many (or few) plans can you afford to sell without admin costs becoming a problem? Could it be fought by an organization or competitor buying those ACA plans for people just to break the system? Wouldn’t regulators get a vote? Congress proposes but the IC disposes.

  2. 2.

    dr. bloor

    March 5, 2018 at 12:35 pm

    @Jay S: Raises an interesting question: is the 27% national crazification factor evenly distributed across states? If not, you’d have to guess that it’s over-represented in Idaho.

    I look forward to the future go-fund-mes from Idaho looking for cash to pay for chemo.

  3. 3.

    Yutsano

    March 5, 2018 at 1:12 pm

    @dr. bloor: A large proportion of the population of Idaho is Mormon. There is (understandably) a lot of mistrust of the federal government in that faith. It doesn’t keep them from sucking up welfare dollars but the official church position is self-sufficiency. And as little fed involvement as possible.

  4. 4.

    Eadgyth

    March 5, 2018 at 1:14 pm

    Hi David,

    Completely off topic but something very important for insurance consideration and I wasn’t sure how else to get it to you.

    I follow several people pushing the ketogenic diet. Right now they are gathering statistics on how they can cure (cure = as long as the person remains on the diet, they need minimal to no drug interventions.) Compliance is very high as well. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13300-018-0373-9 . I point to this one as it came out recently and got published. Dr. Eric Westerman is also doing very interesting things as are several others; only Virta is using this particular high-counseling model that I know of. It’s a cheap and easy fix for many.

    Then in the background there is the “slow moving catastrophe” that I only hear about in ketogenic circles: https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/04/373472-un-urges-action-slow-motion-catastrophe-non-communicable-diseases
    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/04/china-diabetes_n_3867778.html
    http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/majority-of-california-adults-have-prediabetes-or-diabetes
    This should be getting a lot more panic and attention than it does. Not only can no one afford it, but so many people suffer and suffer. Poor health and energy. South Pacific islands where Doctors Without Borders goes and amputates limbs all day. Lost vision. Lost lives.

    Basically, if you look at obesity and type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes, those impacted rise to over 50% in several recent surveys. Go back and look at pictures of “typical people” from 1970 and earlier, and it is striking how thin everyone was. So when it comes to the price of healthcare, how can we possibly forecast it if more than 50% of the population is likely to end up with metabolic syndrome? How can any system possibly keep up? I feel like the rising tide of metabolic syndrome should be *the* thing being discussed.

  5. 5.

    David Anderson

    March 5, 2018 at 1:52 pm

    @Eadgyth: I do not have any knowledge that is relevant to evaluate anything at those links. I am sorry.

  6. 6.

    Libraryguy

    March 6, 2018 at 9:40 am

    xx

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - twbrandt - Belle Isle, Detroit, Michigan 3
Image by twbrandt (7/20/25)
Donate

Recent Comments

  • FelonyGovt on Squirrel! (Open Thread) (Jul 20, 2025 @ 12:15pm)
  • Fair Economist on Squirrel! (Open Thread) (Jul 20, 2025 @ 12:13pm)
  • The Audacity of Krope on Squirrel! (Open Thread) (Jul 20, 2025 @ 12:13pm)
  • WaterGirl on Last Call for the Raffle – If You Bought Tickets, Please Check This List (Jul 20, 2025 @ 12:12pm)
  • Fair Economist on Squirrel! (Open Thread) (Jul 20, 2025 @ 12:11pm)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
No Kings Protests June 14 2025

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!